Jamaica is a Goshen, a place of absolute beauty and infinite abundance. Many will not see this unless they are looking through spiritual eyes. The natural beauty of the land, the white sandy beaches, the flowing rivers, the lush mountain range, the wide variety of flora and fauna, and the eco-rich Cockpit Country are evidence of God’s intent for this nation.
But, until the Jamaican people repent and are restored to righteousness, we will continue to face wilful wastes and woeful wants and not experience the true prosperity that only comes from God and God alone.
The signs are crystal clear; the paths are already established. When Jamaica finds its way under a righteous government, foreigners in droves will trek across continents, brave life-threatening circumstances just to see the awesome wonder the little island with the giant-size potential has become under the divine hand of the Eternal Father. There will be no need for billion-dollar tourism budgets and a minister and his minions running around begging vacationers to visit.
While we await the inevitable, the government of the day, in its desperate bid to maintain power, continues to do what it has always done with the expectation of different results.
Jamaica sees tourism as the goose that laid the golden egg, raking in wealth from mainly the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Wining and dining the idle rich and the aspirants in luxurious all-inclusive hotels that imprison the picturesque coastlines and cater to their every need at exotic cruise ship stops.
For years, governments have downplayed the plight of the people in order to cater to the whims and fancies of hoteliers and their guests. No bone is spared in the mission to preserve the goose, even if it means blocking locals from hotel properties and denying Jamaicans their constitutional right to access prime beaches. Top strategies have been activated to keep visitors from engaging with ordinary Jamaicans in their communities, and in some cases, well-crafted reasons have been raised to bulldoze long-standing squatter settlements obstructing visitors’ view of glowing sunsets.
The well-preserved goose, feathering many top-ranking nests, was given full honours and facilitated at every level.
Spectacularly sleazy, shameful, and unsavoury hotel entertainment activities are used to lure visitors and accommodate their unbridled lusts. Ganja, though illegal, was openly peddled to tourists, along with all sorts of despicable favours under the sun and on white sandy beaches.
To keep this gangrene goose alive, Jamaica has exploited the sun, sand, and sea, aided and abetted by our global athletic prowess and our dominant music brands. These brands, especially in recent years, along with our dance, craft, and culture, have been showing signs of wear.
So, the tourism minister Edmund Bartlett, in a desperate bid to identify other ways to keep the goose fat and fleshy, has set his sights on the nation’s history of pain and suffering through ‘dark tourism.’ According to the tourism minister, the built heritage is very important because it tells a story in stone, sticks, and mortar.
Dark tourism is a term used to describe travel done for the fascination of seeing places historically associated with death and suffering.
People trek to Europe to stand in awe of the remains of the Holocaust concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau. They travel to Ghana to see the holding forts for slaves during the Transatlantic Trade and other places where some of the most atrocious crimes against humanity were committed centuries ago.
It was recently reported that American preacher Roxanne Caleb wept uncontrollable tears and had to be medically assisted on a tour into the pitch-dark dungeon in Ghana where African slaves were held before they were shipped away to the West Indies. This kind of heart-rending experience may be sought by some, but historical tragedies can deliver more than just a passing memory. They sometimes trigger and feed into deep deposits of hate and set in motion seasons of revenge.
A mosaic of places across the island bears the residue of Colonial Jamaica, where brutal beatings, hangings, and other wickedness took place. Some of these places are also altars established by the colonists, the African ancestors, and others to honour gods they revered in their lifetime.
Truth be told, Jamaica’s built heritage, especially in 1692, speaks of a slave colony overrun by pirates and prostitutes and a full-blown rejection of righteousness.
Port Royal is a reminder of God’s anger against a rebellious people. From its celebrated capital, the nation was flirting with the devil and had rightly earned the wrath of God, resulting in one of the most unforgettable earthquakes to have hit any country. The built heritage over many decades also details the plunder of arable lands by foreigners for minerals and the waste of billions of dollars and vital resources by governments, leaving many communities in abject poverty. It is also the story of the neglect of critical infrastructure and the abject failure of the political class to ensure real development and the upliftment of a people.
Bartlett’s flirtation with the dark tourism idea sidesteps the fact that Jamaica, today, with all its heritage that he wishes to leverage, has hastened its move away from righteousness and has joined a relentless rush to realise reprobate American ideals by any means necessary.
Bartlett claims that this convergence of so many cultures and peoples called Jamaica, along with its past, whether light or dark, must come into tourism play. It is this kind of thinking that opens doors for interfaith worship and the setting up of altars to marine spirits, river mumma, and the plethora of revivalism gods that have been erected all across the nation in the name of cultural retention and the celebration of ancestry and heritage.
The stark reality is that the Jamaican story, built or practised, urgently calls for repentance and not celebration.
So many of our leaders have latched on to the dark agenda of the European Union, Canada, the United States, and others in their continued rebellion against Righteousness. The unabashed promotion of failed ideas from foreign will only delay the need for this nation to repent, relent, and realise its Goshen potential.
At a time when the nation is already under divine judgement, this careless talk of making money from showcasing wickedness is reckless.
Any useful visit to a place of pain and suffering should lead to Calvary, where there is hope for eternal life. Be assured, Calvary is an all-expense-paid trip to repentance, and it is not a high-priced tourist venture. All it requires is an open heart, ready to receive the gift of Salvation. I invite the minister to try it.
